


memento mori ver. 2

by ObscureReference



Series: Curses and Blessings [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 17:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5214347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObscureReference/pseuds/ObscureReference
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"FROM THIS MOMENT FORWARD," the Witch said. "THIS CHILD IS CURSED. HE SHALL LIVE A LIFE AS FULL OR EMPTY AS ANY OTHER ON THIS EARTH, ENTIRELY OF HIS OWN CHOOSING. HOWEVER, SHOULD HE KISS HIS TRUE LOVE, HE WILL FALL INTO AN UNWAKEABLE SLEEP.  THAT IS MY GIFT."</p>
            </blockquote>





	memento mori ver. 2

**Author's Note:**

> I said I was gonna write a Nursey/Chowder fic and here it is. I wrote an alternative version, as you can see by the "series" link. It's a version like this, except instead of sleeping, Chowder is cursed death and the events go slightly differently. Check that out too, if you have the time.

_Report of Birth_

_Vital Statistics Department — County Clerk's Office_

_Full name of child: **Christopher M. Chow**_

_Sex: **Male**_

_DOB: **October 10, 199--**_

_Weight: **6.9lbs**_

_Maiden Name of Mother: **\----------**_

_Full Name of Father: **\-----------**_

_City: **San Francisco, California**_

_Affiliation:   Standard   Blessed **Cursed**     Other_

\----------

Chowder really, really liked it at Samwell.

He liked the way the frost left patterns on the windows in the winter in a way he never saw back in San Francisco. He liked Bitty's cookies. He liked how busy the campus always was because it reminded him of home. He liked when Nursey and Dex got along long enough to watch the Sharks games with him. He liked Shitty's personality. He liked helping Lardo look for material for her art projects.

He liked sitting by the pond and listening to Nursey read poetry. He liked talking to Jack and cooking with Bitty and drinking with Nursey at crowded Haus parties. He liked all of his classes and coding with Dex and spending time with Nursey. He liked watching Ransom and Holster go back and forth in their conversations and the way Nursey's laughed sounded when they made a particularly good joke.

Okay. So Chowder liked Nursey, maybe. A little.

But nothing more.

\----------

"So," Bitty started and for some reason his tone made Chowder's heart sink. "You and Nursey have been spending an awful lot of time together lately."

Chowder shrugged.

"I guess," he said. It came out kind of weak and weird, and when Bitty shot him a look from the corner of his eye, Chowder turned away so he didn't have to see. He tried to focus on mixing the dough instead.

When Bitty continued, his voice was a little more hesitant than before, but it still held the same affectionate quality that for once made Chowder cringe.

"Well," Bitty said. "I've seen the way he looks at _you_ at least. And I'm pretty sure I've seen you look at him the same."

Stop, Chowder said. Or maybe he didn't. Maybe his heart whispered it instead and it all felt the same when he was too petrified to move.

"Come on," Bitty teased, and Chowder somehow tensed even more. This was dangerous ground. "It's okay to admit it. I can even be your wingman if you want, even though I think your chances are pretty good on your own. Nursey really likes you."

It felt like a punch to the gut, electricity in his veins. Chowder's heart skipped a beat and for a moment he thought, _This is it,_ the moment where he slipped under, kiss or no kiss. Suddenly, he found his voice again.

"I don't like Nursey!" It came out sharp and much louder than he intended. His voice felt like steel. "I don't like anyone!"

The kitchen went silent. Not even Bitty made noise. They had both stopped stirring.

Chowder was afraid to look. He wanted to open his mouth, so say something else, to apologize, but everything tasted like copper and his throat was tight enough that he held still instead. He was so _mean_ just now, and Bitty had done _nothing_ wrong. His head spun.

He was very grateful no one else is in the Haus right now. He wished he were gone too. But he didn't have that option, so he looked at Bitty instead. Bitty looked back, eyes wide. Chowder swallowed.

"I'm sorry, Chowder," Bitty said softly. "I didn't mean...."

Bitty's voice was so _heavy_ and _sad_ and _awful_. He wanted to cry, a little.

"No!" It was too loud again. Chowder made a visible effort to reel his voice back in. He wasn't used to this at all. To yelling, to thinking about it— Any of this. "No, Bitty, it's– It's not you, I'm sorry!"

His throat caught on every other syllable, left him fumbling in the dust. It might have been magic at work here, but it felt a lot like Chowder's own inadequacy.

"I can't—"

He couldn't even apologize correctly.

"I don't like anyone," he repeated. It felt like a confession. When Chowder breathed in, his chest shuddered.

Bitty only looked at him. Trying to decipher what Chowder is saying, no doubt, because he had to know it wasn't as simple as _like_ or _don't like._ Bitty was smart like that.

Chowder.

Chowder didn't know what he wanted.

On instinct, he brushed back the hair by his ear and turned, just so. He stared at the oven, neck craned so that maybe, at the right angle, Bitty might see—

"Chowder," Bitty said slowly, and Chowder knew he had seen. "Are you Cursed?"  
  
He couldn't move. The whole world was frozen. 

"I don't like anyone," he repeated, his eyes never straying to Bitty's face.

Bitty's intake of breath was so sharp it almost echoed in the kitchen. He wondered if Bitty had ever met anyone who was Cursed before. He wouldn't have been surprised if Bitty had been Blessed somehow, because Bitty was just so _good_ and Chowder felt so bad about even being Cursed in the presence of someone so amazing, as though he might somehow infect Bitty somehow just by standing too close.

He knew that wasn't how Curses worked. Still. He thought about running, and then felt even worse because Bitty deserved the truth, whether or not Chowder could bring himself to give it. 

"Okay. Okay," Bitty said. "Alright. Is it. You probably can't talk about it, right?"

Chowder shook his head. 

"Okay. That's fine. That's a-okay."

It was obvious Bitty was doing just as well as Chowder's mom had done when he'd first been Cursed as a child, repeating his assurances more to himself than Chowder. But he appreciated that Bitty was at least trying to put up a calm front.

"Can. Can I guess it? Is that okay?"

He nodded.   
  
"Alright." Bitty repeated. "Okay. Obviously it's something to do with love. Obviously. Okay. Uh. If someone loves... No. If _you_ love..."

It took a minute for Bitty to work up to the first guess. The mixing bowls sat on the counter, forgotten. 

"If you fall in love," Bitty began. "Your love will..."

Chowder shook his head, once, quickly. Bitty made a noise.   
  
"Okay. Not your love then. If you fall in love, then... Then you'll..."

There were only so many ways you could Curse someone with love. Bitty was smart. So smart. He'd have it figured out in no time and then. Then Chowder didn't know what. Then Bitty would know, he guessed, and he wasn't sure if that was better or worse. No one outside his family had ever known before. 

Bitty ran his tongue over his bottom lip. "If you fall in love..."

His breath caught audibly. Chowder closed his eyes.   
  
"If you fall in love... you'll die."

" _No_ ," Chowder managed to say, despite the tightness in his throat. He shook his head. He still couldn't look at Bitty, but _no._ Not death. Not quite. "It's..."

For the first time, Bitty prompted him, his voice strained with anxiety.

"It's?"

Chowder's eyes stung, but he did his best to smile at Bitty anyway.

"It's like a coma, I guess?" He said, shifting from foot to foot. It was the first time he'd ever tried to explain it.  "Like Sleeping Beauty."

Sleeping Beauty made it look easy. Her nap only lasted a few days, even if she couldn't wake up by herself. Her nap had a cure.

Chowder glanced at Bitty, whose face could break hearts. He quickly looked at the kitchen floor.

"Like sleeping," Chowder said aloud. "Yeah."

Bitty slammed in to him from the side and wrapped his arms around Chowder's neck. Chowder twisted, burying his face in Bitty's hair and inhaling. It smelled like strawberries. It reminded him of home, and Chowder's lungs shuddered a little less when he breathed the scent in. Bitty was the perfect height to bury his face in to Chowder's neck. He gave the best hugs.

In the Disney version of the film, Aurora slept for only a few days before Phillip woke her up. The witch died and everyone in the castle celebrated. His mom had tried to hide it, but Chowder knew that in the original story, the princess had slept for a hundred years. He wondered, when the Curse came to pass, which version he'd get: the happy version or the real one.

He didn't know. But Curses didn't get their name from nowhere.

Chowder wondered if Aurora had dreamed at all.

Bitty didn't ask for details immediately, but once they had both calmed down enough, Chowder couldn't stop the open faucet between his mouth and his brain.

"It's not like a birthday thing, is it?" Bitty asked. His voice sounded thick against Chowder's shoulder. He was sure Bitty hadn't pulled away because of the growing wet spot on his shirt, but the wetness of Chowder's own eyes made him grateful for someone to tear up with. "I don't have to worry about the clock striking midnight on your nineteenth birthday or something, right?"

The joke fell flat, but Chowder smiled anyway. It was more genuine that his other smile had been.

"No," he said. "I don't think so. My grandma said it was an active thing. Even if I fall in love, nothing will happen unless they kiss me. So I think I'm pretty much safe until then."

Bitty pulled away slightly and Chowder pretended not to see how he wiped his face with a napkin from the counter. Chowder sniffed.

"Well," Bitty said, drawing a deep breath. "I guess that means I'm gonna have to turn into a real southern father and keep all the hooligans away from my son."

Chowder laughed and Bitty smiled at the sound. His joke had lightened the atmosphere of the kitchen, certainly. But Chowder couldn't help how his mind drifted back to staring at Nursey's lips when they sat together, across the table or by the Pond. He wondered if they were as soft as they looked or what it would be like to just brush their mouths together. Just lightly.

Bitty could keep the whole school at bay, but Chowder thought that if anybody was going to ruin this, it would be himself.

\----------

His grandmother told him the story once. She had refused to ever speak of it in detail again, lest somehow evil came of it, but Chowder never forgot.

He was born on a cool October morning, his grandmother said. The sky was clear and the air was crisp. His mother had recognized the signs of labor and had gotten to the hospital with plenty of time to spare.

His birth had not been unusually long or hard, but it was tiring. The doctors had whisked him away for some general examinations, found him healthy, and brought him back so his mother could get a good look at him. His grandmother had stepped out of the room for only a moment, the doctors leaving to tend other patients, and Chowder was alone with his mother.

His mother had cradled him, taking in every inch of his sleeping face when her own eyelids began to droop.

His mother had dozed off. Just for a minute, she said. Just for a split second she had closed her eyes.

When she had woken up mere moments later, her arms were empty and the Witch's were full.

The Witch cradled Chowder's infant body above his mother's bed and his mother could only look on in horror, knowing she could not simply pluck him out of the beast's arms, lest something terrible befall her newborn son. She had no idea what would happen if she moved or of how fickle the Witch's whims were. There was nothing to do but watch.

His grandmother came in at that exact moment and froze in the doorway at the sight. His grandmother described it as though all time and space had faded away except for that one, tiny hospital room.

Some babies were born with Curses or Blessings, his grandmother said, cast by far off Witches at random, shaping the lives and fortune of children by mere chance. For a Witch to seek out a child in person was something other than mere happenstance. It was deliberate.

Of course it would be a Curse the Witch came to give, she said. Witches were dreaded, ominous creatures. They did not grace your household to bring glad tidings.

His grandmother described the Witch looming over his mother as a great shadow, an indefinable shade. Shapes formed and re-formed under the wispy cloth covering most of the Witch's face, ever-shifting, more beast-like than human. Everything about its very presence seemed to suck the brightness from the room. Everything, of course, except for the infant cradled in its arms.

 _"FROM THIS MOMENT FORWARD,"_  the Witch said. The walls shook as if blown by a great wind as the Witch neared its long, narrow beak closer to Chowder's sleeping face. _"THIS CHILD IS CURSED."_

His mother gasped. His grandmother said she felt the whispers of its terrible voice behind her ribcage like a slithering beast. She nearly collapsed in the doorway, trembling from the force of it.

_"HE SHALL LIVE A LIFE AS FULL OR EMPTY AS ANY OTHER ON THIS EARTH, ENTIRELY OF HIS OWN CHOOSING. HOWEVER, SHOULD HE KISS HIS TRUE LOVE, HE WILL FALL INTO AN UNWAKEABLE SLEEP. THAT IS MY GIFT."_

A wisp of something barely visible left the ghoulish mass of shadows that composed the Witch's face, slithering down its arms and over Chowder's body. It curled around his throat. The Witch simply observed as the wisp suddenly reared back and struck the space behind his right ear with a lash that echoed throughout the hospital room.

Nobody moved, Chowder included. There was no indication Chowder had ever felt the evil on his skin.

Satisfied, the Witch placed him almost gently back in to his mother's arms. His mother stared, open mouthed. The movement jostled Chowder's sleeping form, and with the force only a baby could muster, he began to cry for the second time since his birth.

That was when his mother began screaming. Suddenly, the Witch was gone, and his mother's voice had summoned an army of doctors. His mother was too hysterical to do anything but shriek, which left his grandmother to describe what happened.

The doctors examined everyone present in the room, but the only evidence of the Witch's treachery had been the dark, bold letters inked into Chowder's skin, nearly hidden by the curve of his ear: _Memento Mori._

His grandmother had only spoken of the incident twice in her life; once, when the doctors had frantically asked what had caused their patient's hysteria, and then once more, over a decade later, when Chowder had begged to know what the mark behind his ear meant and why it made his mother slump when she saw it.

"Evil comes when you call for it," his grandmother said, looking out the window for some wicked thing he couldn't see. "Do not speak of such things again."

Chowder had never forgotten the gravity of her voice or the way her eyes shined in the sunlight. He touched the space behind his ear briefly and didn't ask again.

\----------

" _So long this lives, and this gives life to thee_ ," Nursey finished. He glanced up at the ending and smiled. Chowder smiled back.

"I liked that one," he said. It was true. Chowder never really got Shakespeare, but coming from Nursey it all sounded rather nice, even if he wasn't entirely sure what it meant.  

"So," Nursey said as he adjusted the book in his lap. "Which one next?"

Chowder hummed and examined the upside down book before him. Nursey allowed him to flip the pages until another poem caught his eye.

"What's this one?" Chowder asked, fingering the title.

"' _In Paris With You_  by James Fenton'," Nursey read aloud. "That's a pretty good one. You want to hear it?"

Chowder couldn't keep the enthusiasm out of his voice, even if he tried. He didn't. "Yes, please!"

They had been doing this for nearly an hour now. Chowder had originally visited Nursey's room to study, but after the first few minutes, he'd grown more interested in Nursey's homework than his own. Chowder didn't know anything about poetry, but listening to Nursey talk about all the finer details of a poem that Chowder would otherwise miss was fascinating.

The book seemed to be a collection of poems without any rhyme or reason tying them all together, but Chowder found each one as captivating as the last. Especially when Nursey was the one reciting it.

Nursey cleared his throat as Chowder pressed his cheek against the cool sheets. The dorm beds weren't made to hold two hockey boys comfortably, but they made it work.

"Here we go," Nursey said, grinning. He looked down at the book.

" _Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful_  
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.  
I'm one of your talking wounded.  
I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.  
But I'm in Paris with you."

Oh, Chowder thought. This poem was a lot simpler than the previous poems Nursey had been reading. A lot simpler than Shakespeare, at least. It sounded different leaving Nursey's mouth than the other ones too.

Despite the way Chowder had cocked his head and paused, Nursey hadn't done the same. By the time he caught up to what was being said again, Chowder thought he had missed a few stanzas.

 _"Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,_  
The little bit of Paris in our view.  
There's that crack across the ceiling  
And the hotel walls are peeling  
And I'm in Paris with you."

Nursey's eyes flickered off the page, and suddenly Chowder found their gazes locked. Nursey's voice slowed as he looked away from the book, but it never faltered, as though he had read the poem enough times to have memorized it by now.

Chowder's face felt hot.

 _"Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris._  
I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.  
I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,   
I'm in Paris with... all points south."

Nursey paused for a moment and Chowder couldn't tell if that was deliberate or if he had finally forgotten the words. But Nursey still refused to break eye contact, and after a moment he picked up again.

" _Am I embarrassing you?_ " Nursey recited. " _I'm in Paris with you._ "

Unlike the other poems, Nursey didn't immediately grin at the end of his performance and ask Chowder what he thought. This time he said nothing.

"Wow," Chowder croaked after a long moment.

The room was a lot warmer than when they had started, even though Chowder had long since lifted his head from the sheets. He looked away quickly, and the pencil he had tucked behind his ear went rolling to the floor. It was the perfect excuse to jump off the bed and collect himself. When Chowder turned back, pencil in hand, Nursey was looking at the book again.

There was nowhere else to go. Chowder climbed back on the bed. His elbow knocked in to Nursey's knee as he did. He bit his lip and didn't look up.

He really, really liked Nursey. He wondered if maybe Nursey liked him too.

It wasn't a good thing.

\----------

Every now and again, the Haus threw parties that were closed to the general public. This was one of those nights.

It was early spring, which meant the evening air was a little brisk, but not so cold that they couldn't put up with it with a jacket. Chowder thought his hoodie was doing the trick just fine, despite the looks Bitty kept shooting him. It wasn't _that_ cold out.

Ransom and Holster had scored a grill from a garage sale. They had showed up on the front steps this morning, claiming the guy they bought it from said it was broken even thought it looked like it was in perfectly good condition. Shitty left and came back with a fuel tank. Sure enough, the grill refused to light.

They called Dex. After half an hour and whatever Dex had done to it, the grill was as good as new. Everybody had cheered at the sight of flames leaping from the metal before dying down to a more manageable rate. Dex's face had gone red when Jack and Bitty both clapped him on the back for a job well done, and then Holster and Ransom high-fived, proclaiming at the same time, "Cookout! Cookout!"

Bitty had clapped his hands, overjoyed, and with Shitty's enthusiastic approval, it was a done deal.

The afternoon had gone by quickly, and by the time the sun was low in the sky, Chowder sat on the back porch with the rest of the people in the Haus, licking the last of the ketchup off his fingertips. Bitty made good hotdogs.

Lardo nudged his knee with her foot. Chowder looked up to where Lardo sat on the step above him.

"Hey," she said. "How much do you wanna bet that Bitty burns his eyebrows off somehow?"

"No way!" Chowder cried immediately. "Bitty's a great cook!"

Lardo shrugged. "We've seen him _bake._ But can he cook on a grill?"

"I thought it tasted pretty good." Bitty hadn't even gotten to do the hamburgers yet.

"Yeah," Lardo agreed. "But does he know how to work a grill without catching the whole backyard on fire? We've only seen Bitty bake inside. We don't _really_ know what he's like on a grill. Will the grass catch on fire before he's finished? Will Shitty have to take over and burn all his chest hair off because he refuses to put on a shirt, even though it's still cold as hell?"

The imagery made both Lardo and Chowder laugh. Even Dex, as he eavesdropped passing by, couldn't stifle his chuckle.

Chowder thought about it for a moment.

"Well," he said. "Bitty's from Georgia, right? They probably do lots of outdoorsy things there."

Bitty had probably cooked on a grill before, even if Chowder hadn't. The homes in San Francisco didn't have enough room in their yards to set up a grill in. Not in the city, anyway.

Suddenly, the fire on the grill burst three feet in the air. Holster and Shitty both hollered. Jack jumped back several feet. The fire dialed back to normal heights almost immediately after. Bitty hadn't even blinked.

"Damn," Lardo said. "I take it back. Bits has skills."

Chowder grinned, triumphant. Bitty had lots of hidden talents.

"Oh, shoot," Bitty said loud enough to be heard across the backyard. "Can someone grab another bag of buns from the kitchen? I just dropped the open bag in the grass."

"Nice one!" Holster chirped. Ransom raised his cup in agreement. His mouth was too full of chips to otherwise speak up.

"I'll get it!" Chowder called back, pushing his paper plate to the side.

"Thank you!"

Lardo scooted over as Chowder passed her on the steps. He ducked inside the Haus and slipped into the kitchen. The newly store bought hamburger buns sat on the kitchen counter, but Chowder paused after grabbing them. The chip bag had seemed mostly empty when he had looked over, so he grabbed another one of those too, plus another beer for Lardo. Hers had  been empty for a few minutes, but she complained she was too tired to go inside to get another and had waved Chowder off earlier when he offered.

Hands full, Chowder turned around and walked toward the kitchen entrance. He nearly dropped everything as he walked straight in to Nursey, who rounded through the kitchen door right as Chowder was trying to leave. He managed to catch everything in time and grinned up, sheepishly.

"You need any help there?" Nursey asked, eyeing the bags.

"No thanks!" Chowder said. He gripped both the buns and the chips with one hand and Lardo's beer with the other. It wasn't that difficult, though the beer did need readjusting every few seconds.

Nursey was blocking the doorway. Chowder shifted for a moment. Nursey made no move to enter further into the kitchen and he didn't say anything immediately after Chowder's dismissal either. They merely looked at each other.

"Are you okay?" Chowder asked after a moment. It wasn't like Nursey to be so spacey. Not without a lot more alcohol in his system anyway. He readjusted the neck of the booze in his hand. The condensation made the bottle all slippery.

Nursey jumped slightly, blinking. Chowder wondered what he had zoned out about.

"Yeah," Nursey said. "Sorry, I was just thinking about something."

He still didn't move. Chowder patiently waited.

Nursey paused for a moment, drawing a breath. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Sure," Chowder said. "Can I take this out to Bitty first?"

Nursey nodded. "Okay. Yeah. Let me—"

"I can still—"

Nursey ducked down to grab one of the bags as  Chowder tilted his head further up to decline. If they had tried on purpose to time it any better, it never would have worked. Nursey went too far down and Chowder went too far up. They both leaned the wrong way. Their lips brushed. The contact was so brief Chowder's mouth tingled.  

It was like a light switch. One moment Chowder was up and alert, and the next his legs were giving out from underneath him. He barely even felt the sting of hitting the floor.

Distantly, he was aware of the beer bottle breaking and Nursey's hands on his shoulders. His eyelids drooped.

Then everything went dark.

\----------

Chowder woke up. It took a long moment of staring at the ceiling to remember what had happened.

Then it took another long minute of staring in to nothing to work out why he was awake. The ceiling didn't give him any answers.

"Chowder?" Bitty asked. Chowder blinked and suddenly he was there, helping Chowder in to a sitting position. "Hey there. How do you feel?"

"Fine," Chowder answered on instinct. He blinked. "Uh. My head kind of hurts."

Bitty nodded solemnly. "That's because you knocked it on the floor when you fell."

That made a lot of sense. Chowder nodded.

"Uh." It was hard to find the words. "Why am I...."

Bitty looked off to the side. Chowder suddenly realized that even though he and Bitty were on the floor, everybody who had been outside was now inside and standing in the kitchen. It was a lot of people to take in at once, all looking at him with varying shades of concern and amusement. All except Nursey, who leaned against the counter with something that looked like guilt.

"Alright you rubberneckers, move it along," Lardo said, gesturing her free hand in a 'shoo' motion at the boys. In her other hand seemed to be what looked like glass, which she dumped into the trashcan. "Party's over. Everybody back outside."

Shitty and Jack were behind Lardo, backing her up, and slowly the hockey players moved toward the exit, sans Nursey. Bitty also didn't immediately move.

Shitty winked at Chowder before playfully shoving Holster's arm, saying, "Come on, you heard her. Get outta here."

Holster rolled his eyes, but he and Ransom picked up the pace.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Bitty asked. "Do you want to lie down upstairs for a minute?"

"I think I'm good," Chowder said. It was the truth. He thought he would have been more shaken up, but right now he wanted answers more than a nap.

Bitty squeezed his shoulder before helping Chowder to  his feet. "Holler if you need anything, okay?"

Then he and the rest of the crowd were shuffling out of the kitchen. There were various comments exchanged between the group, Ransom and Holster especially, but it was all muddled together so much that Chowder couldn't make out the words. Bitty shot him one final look before turning the corner. He was the last to go. Then it was just Chowder and Nursey alone in the kitchen.

Chowder eyed the floor. Somebody had cleaned up the beer.

"Are you sure you feeling alright?" Nursey asked once they were both pretty sure nobody was left in the Haus. "We can wait if you want. I didn't know that— I didn't mean to—"

"Yeah," Chowder said. He wasn't sure what to say. 'Surprise, I'm Cursed?' "Uh. Surprise?"

Nursey ran his tongue over his lower lip."Bitty told me about it. I'm sorry. I didn't know..."

This was one the reasons it was never fun to tell anyone. Chowder scuffed his shoe on the floor.

"It's not your fault," he said, shrugging. "You didn't know. I just, you know. Don't know how I'm not still asleep?"

The words from his grandmother's story ran through his head. He remembered what the Witch had said. "If he should kiss his true love..."

Chowder passed out because of Nursey. His _true love_. He had always thought Nursey was pretty amazing, but he hadn't been entirely sure about the true love part. At least now he knew for sure. The realization left giddy butterflies in his stomach.

If only Nursey looked a little less ragged.

"So how'd you fix it?" Chowder asked. "After you kissed me?"

"I kissed you again."

"What?"

That time Nursey cracked a grin. It wasn't much, but it was enough that Chowder's shoulders relaxed.

"I kissed you again," Nursey repeated. "Bitty said you were Cursed, but I'm Blessed. True Love's Kiss."

It took a moment for Chowder to process that, to realize Nursey meant True Love's Kiss as in _the_ True Love's Kiss. The Blessing from every fairytale he'd ever read, the ultimate weapon that could heal any wound and break any Curse. The Blessing he was pretty sure didn't _exist_ out of fairytales.

But Nursey didn't sound like he was lying. And Chowder was still awake for a reason.

"You're like a prince," Chowder blurted without thinking. Nursey ducked his head sheepishly, for once not taking the compliment as it came.

"Not really," he said. "I'm just glad you're okay. You _are_ okay, right?"

Chowder nodded. He got the feeling he'd be getting asked that a lot in the next few days.

Nursey took a deep breath, not unlike the one he had taken before accidentally kissing Chowder. He looked between the floor and Chowder's face several times. The space between them seemed awfully big for the Haus kitchen to hold.

"So, do you. I mean." Nursey glanced down again and swallowed. "Are you okay with this? With me?"

 _Being your true love_ , seemed to be implied.

Chowder blinked. "True Love's Kiss breaks everything, right?"

Nursey nodded hesitantly. "Right."

"So I'm not in danger of dropping into a coma anymore?"

"I think so."

"Okay then." Chowder crossed the distance between them and before Nursey could move, planted a kiss right on Nursey's mouth. He pulled back after a moment. "Then I'm more than okay with it!"

Nursey blinked, dazed. Slowly, a grin spread across his lips. If Chowder didn't know any better, he would say Nursey's cheeks were even darker than before.

"Cool," Nursey said. He brought his arms up and wrapped them around Chowder's shoulders. "Cool."

Yeah, Chowder thought. It was pretty cool.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is http://someobscurereference.tumblr.com/
> 
> Poems:  
> "Sonnet 18" by William Shakespeare  
> "In Paris With You" by James Fenton


End file.
